If you're switching to Cliniko from Pabau, then here are the details you’ll need in order to transfer your data into your Cliniko account!
Please note that this data transfer service is a process that we will work on with you—not something that you'll need to do yourself. Please don't import spreadsheets or manually add any information into your Cliniko account before the transfer, as duplication will result when your data comes across from Pabau.
The very first step is booking your transfer date! We sometimes book months in advance, so we strongly recommend you book as soon as you can to avoid further delays:
Once you've done that, please read through the guide below. It's important to review each section thoroughly, as it outlines your role in the transfer, and what we do for you.
The guide is broken into the following sections:
Getting familiar with Cliniko
For a smooth transition, please ensure that your team has had an opportunity to play around with Cliniko and are familiar with it. The trial is unrestricted, so all features are available to set up and become familiar with. You can change your subscription level as required while trialing, which will let you add more practitioners!
In case it's useful, these training guides might come in handy:
All of our support articles and guides can be found on our help site, too! You can quickly search for anything you’d like help with right here.
All users are encouraged to contact our support team with any questions. We're easiest reached from within Cliniko by clicking Help on the blue sidebar, and clicking Chat with us! If you'd prefer email, you can reach us at support@cliniko.com.
Exporting your data from Pabau
We'll need an export of your Pabau data in order to load into your Cliniko account. To obtain the data export, you'll need to contact Pabau directly. They will be able to generate an export of your database and files. Pabau may suggest generating CSV spreadsheets of your data, but we cannot use the data in this form.
This may be a chargeable service. More info in Pabau's article here:
https://support.pabau.com/en/pabau2/manage-export#full-data-export-pabau
Here is a pro-forma you may use to email their support team:
Dear Support,
I request a full export of our Pabau system. This should include the meta data, electronic medical records, and attachments.
Kind regards,
The Pabau data export will be a zip file containing these three folders:
EMR
Meta data
Attachments
🚨IMPORTANT: Please do not unzip your data file before sharing it with us, and please share it with us exactly as it is. Do not attempt to upload a folder full of files, as that can cause issues with sharing. Please do not open any of the spreadsheet files, as opening spreadsheets sometimes changes data formatting, making the data useless for transfer.
Once you have your data, please upload it to your preferred cloud storage service (Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox etc), and once uploaded, create a share link to your data. Send us this link so that we can access your data in preparation for the transfer.
Note that any data entered into Pabau after this export will not be transferred to Cliniko, as it won't be included in the exported data. This data will need to be noted and manually entered into Cliniko after the transfer has been completed.
The export from Pabau can take up to 5 business days. Please schedule your export with Pabau for your data to arrive at least a day in advance of your scheduled transfer so that you have time to upload and share, and we have time to download the data. It is important to have all these steps completed prior to the transfer, as we still require time on the day of transfer to load and prepare your data in our system to then be written into your Cliniko account.
🚨 IMPORTANT: If you have more than 10 years or 10,000 patients of data to transfer, please let us know. This is absolutely fine, but the transfer may take more than a day, and extra allowances will need to be made for this volume of data.
Setting up your Cliniko account
There is some setup required in Cliniko prior to the transfer. These are things that we can't necessarily determine or transfer from Pabau, or settings that are specific to Cliniko.
Please ensure the following things are set up as soon as possible:
All required users and practitioners are created,
All sites/locations of your business are set up as Cliniko business locations,
Your time zones have been set correctly (to ensure that appointments get transferred to the right spots), and
Mobile phone numbers have been added to all owner and administrator users at least in the account.
Other items that are not required prior to transfer, but are not transferred and will need to be set up manually are:
Ensure all treatment note templates are created,
Ensure all letter templates are created.
Past practitioners:
Note that when we transfer appointments, we will need a practitioner assigned to the appointment. This is a little complicated for instances where the practitioner is no longer with you and therefore not in Cliniko. In these cases, please let us know whether you would prefer to assign the appointments to:
A generic ‘Former practitioner’ that you create in Cliniko,
Another active practitioner in Cliniko, or
Exclude these appointments entirely.
Alternatively, you may create all your specific members of staff (past and present) in Cliniko, and we’ll assign all appointments correctly. You can set those former practitioners as inactive, as your Cliniko subscription price is based on the total number of active practitioners.
File attachments:
Finally, Cliniko limits the volume of patient attachments in trial accounts. To remove this limit, please add your billing details into your account. Your free trial will continue until completion, and your credit card will not be charged until your trial period has expired.
If you'd like any assistance with getting set up, feel free to contact us! Even if you just have a quick question that you’d like an answer for, we are easiest reached from within Cliniko by clicking Help on the blue sidebar, and clicking Chat with us! You can also click the chat bubble at the bottom right corner of this page.
What do we transfer?
Note that no data is removed from Pabau in the transfer process. Data is copied to your Cliniko account. The types of data that are transferred are not customisable.
Transfer to Cliniko will include the following from your Pabau backup, and will appear as described in Cliniko:
Appointment types
Appointments
Non-appointment calendar items (unavailable slots in Cliniko)
Benefit types (concession types in Cliniko)
Clients
Consultation notes (treatment notes in Cliniko)
Documents (patient files in Cliniko)
Items and products
Medical history and referrals (treatment notes in Cliniko)
Referrers (contacts in Cliniko)
Note that repeating series of appointments cannot be transferred into Cliniko with the repeating series intact. These appointments are created in Cliniko individually, and will need to be managed individually.
What don’t we transfer?
Unfortunately, all financial details are excluded from transfer. There is not a way to import financial data into Cliniko. This includes:
Invoices
Payments
Credits
Account statements
Appointment invoice/payment statuses
If you'd like to record prior payment history or outstanding debts in Cliniko, you can create an opening balance for those patients. This is not considered revenue and will not affect Cliniko's reporting.
In addition, the following items are not transferrable and must be set up manually where needed:
Users and practitioners, practitioner reference numbers
Businesses locations and settings
Expenses and stock sales
3rd party app integrations
Communication records
Waitlist data
Existing reports
Letters and letter templates
Patient forms and form templates
Communication templates (email and SMS)
Information that we'll need from you
When you book a transfer date, you'll be sent a confirmation email which includes a link to a secure electronic form. This form is where the below information is collected from you. If you miss the confirmation email, another link to the same form will be sent in a reminder email closer to your transfer date. Please let us know if you do not receive these emails.
The following are some questions we need to know to accurately transfer data into Cliniko. If you're unsure of the answer, please seek clarification.
Do you have any practitioners in Pabau who are inactive?
If so, we will need to determine what to do with appointments assigned to them. There are a couple of options here:
We can leave those appointments behind and not transfer them into Cliniko.
You can create all your inactive practitioners in Cliniko, and we can assign appointments to the correct practitioner. You can make these practitioners inactive in Cliniko prior to transfer, so they do not contribute to your subscription plan.
You can elect one or more other practitioners in Cliniko to assign those appointments to (e.g. use an existing practitioner, or create one practitioner named “Old Pabau practitioner”, or similar). You'll just need to tell us which practitioner/s in Pabau you want mapped to which practitioner/s in Cliniko.
Accessing your Cliniko account
In order to access your new Cliniko account and write your data to it, we’ll need your Cliniko URL and an API key. When you book a transfer date, you'll be sent a confirmation email which includes a link to a secure electronic form. This form is where this information is collected from you. If you miss the confirmation email, another link to the same form will be sent in a reminder email closer to your transfer date. Please let us know if you do not receive these emails.
Cliniko URL:
Your URL can be found in your browser address bar when you're logged in to Cliniko, and will look something like https://your-clinic.au4.cliniko.com. This is required so that we may be sure we’re transferring data to the correct account.
Cliniko API key:
Please log in to your Cliniko account to generate the API key. You'll need to be logged in as an administrative user who is also a practitioner so that the API key generated has the required data access permissions. Please also see our guide on generating a Cliniko API key.
To have the correct permissions to create treatment notes, the provided API key must belong to an administrator user who is also a practitioner. Please do not provide an API key for an administrator that is not also a practitioner.
Your API keys are like passwords, and must be handled with care. It's very important that this information is transmitted to us securely. When you book a transfer date, you'll be sent a confirmation email which includes a link to a secure electronic form. This form is where you can safely communicate your API keys and other information to us. If you miss the confirmation email, another link to the same form will be sent in a reminder email closer to your transfer date. Please let us know if you do not receive these emails.
Administrator mobile numbers:
Please add a mobile number to all owner and administrator user profiles at least in the destination account. This allows us to verify your identity if you ever need our help. This won't upset the transfer, but as account owners and administrators it is important.
On the day of the transfer
As a reminder, performing your Pabau backup will take up to 5 business days, and transfer into Cliniko cannot start until your data backup has been sent to us. If we are only supplied with your data on the morning of transfer, your actual transfer may not commence until much later in the day, or potentially another day. Accordingly, please schedule backup and upload to be completed by the day prior to your transfer.
Please ensure you are contactable on the day of the transfer. While we shouldn’t need to hassle you much on that day, we may need to contact you if some of the required information or set up is incomplete. If we can’t get in touch with you, we can wait for your response, but this may result in your transfer being delayed.
Transfers are usually performed between 8am and 3pm AEDT, Mon-Fri. We’ll get started on the morning of your booking and let you know when we are done. If it looks like things will take longer than the booked day, we’ll be sure to reach out and keep you informed of the progress.
When the transfer is completed, you’ll be able to use your data within Cliniko immediately.
If there’s anything you’d like to confirm or discuss prior to transfer, please do let us know - we’re here to help!
The final checklist
Having all of this done before the transfer takes place is super important. Please be sure that each item on these lists has been checked off prior to your transfer date:
The transfer date has been booked
The data export from Pabau has been arranged
The data export from Pabau has been uploaded to your chosen online storage, and a share link given to the Cliniko team
Completed the electronic form to give us your API keys and Cliniko URL (see instructions), and the answers to your questions (see questions)
On the Cliniko side of things:
[Required] Practitioners have been created, both active and inactive (see guide)
[Strongly recommended] All administrator user accounts have mobile numbers
[Required] Business locations have been created, both active and inactive (see guide)
[Required] You have added a payment method to your Cliniko subscription, to lift the file upload limitation (see guide)
After transfer
After the data transfer is complete, the following items will need attending to. Note that your transferred appointments are using appointment types that are not set to send reminders, and have no treatment note templates or related billable items set. If you need your future transferred appointments to send reminders, please edit those appointment types.
Ensure all required appointments types are created (see guide)
Set practitioners as providers of appointment types (see guide)
Create treatment note templates (see guide)
Relate treatment note templates to appointment types (see guide)
Ensure all required billable items are created (see guide)
Relate billable items to appointment types (see guide)
Create letter templates (see guide)
We know that transferring from another system is a big deal, and we want to help make the process as easy as possible for you. If you have any questions on anything at all, please reach out to us. We're always available to help!